HUTTO – Texas State Technical College’s East Williamson County campus hosted more than 200 area high school students during its open house on Friday, March 3, at the East Williamson County Higher Education Center in Hutto.
The event’s goal was to show students some career options that they might not have considered and the benefits of attending a two-year college.
The Culinary Arts program did bananas Foster and chocolate chip cookie demonstrations, and it held butter-making contests for students to win 3D-printed models of dinosaurs made by the Precision Machining Technology program.
“The main reason I like the open house is because a lot of these students have not seen culinary arts done before,” said Brian Bohannon, lead instructor in TSTC’s Culinary Arts program. “I like to see their excitement.”
Apolinar Ruiz, lead instructor in TSTC’s Precision Machining Technology program, said the event was a great way to show off the capabilities of the computer numerical control machines.
“They get to see what they can do, and they get to see our students work,” Ruiz said. Toni Brewington, a job coach at McNeil High School in Austin, brought seniors involved in that school’s job program. She said she wanted her students to understand the money-making potential of jobs that they can pursue after graduating from TSTC.
“I hope they learn there is an alternative to a four-year university,” Brewington said.
Victoria Garcia, a counselor at Vista Ridge High School in Cedar Park, said more than 20 juniors and seniors from that school attended the event. She said students prepared for their visit to TSTC by reading up on its programs and developing questions to ask instructors.
“I want them to learn about the Money-Back Guarantee (offered by TSTC),” Garcia said. “I want them to know that there are job opportunities for them after they graduate.”
Garcia said she would have the students fill out a form later to state what interested them about their visit.
Some of the other school districts sending students to the event included Austin, Hutto, Pflugerville and Taylor.
For more information on TSTC, go to tstc.edu.
